With all of that said tough, still not a reason to ban non-French speaking people from using public services in Québec. When it comes to front-line public service, I expect them to be able to communicate in both official languages. And if not, they should make every effort to accommodate them because they're the public service and we're the public. If someone from Québec was turned down in Alberta, I think it would be just as bad. And even then, what about tourists? People go to parts of Europe, for example, all the time from all over the world and don't speak the language. They get by because of helpful people offering the services, though I'm sure they're secretly annoyed. But still. I don't see how that concept shouldn't apply to Québec. Not to mention if you're an English-speaking citizen in Québec. You pay taxes that go toward public transit for example, but you wouldn't be able to use it. Makes no sense.

Well, reading the article it seems like "ban" is way too strong a word. It just seemed like there would be no real effort to hire workers who were bilingual so if you were walking up to your average ticket booth or talking to a driver or something and wanted to conduct your business in English (in a French city), you would not be guaranteed service and if you absolutely couldn't figure out how to acheter un billet, you'd end up walking. And that is absolutely fair, in my mind. It's what happens literally everywhere in the world. o_O Why is it a big deal if it happens in Montreal? Just because that city is partially English as well? If the francophones of Montreal know enough English that they can speak it when needed, I think the opposite should be true of anglophones living in the same city. Tourists can do whatever it is they always do when they visit a foreign language destination.

City officials aren't walking through the public transit system and kicking people out if they're found speaking English or something. They can't BAN a language. It just seems like they don't think they should be required to offer service in English just like the rest of Canada isn't required to offer service in French. Not out on the street, anyway--there'll always be head offices and phone numbers to call for service in either language but your average bus driver or ticket booth attendant won't necessarily be able to help you in the language that is not actually native to the area. That was my understanding.

Quote originally posted by Team Fail:

The closest I got to really doing anything pre-High School was a novel study in French 9. We started rather close to the end of the year, so we never did finish it. Although it was like, a Grade 3 or 4-reading level book. I can read things and translate what most of it is into English and get the general idea of what's going on, or listen in on a conversation and pick out words I know, like vocab or a conjugated verb, but not much more. The current curriculum sucks and I really wish I had started earlier, or even done French Immersion. I'd be a far better speaker by now.

Yeah, the difficulty really ramps up when you get into the later (and optional) grades of French. When you take a French university course, they start teaching from Ontario's Grade 9 French. And that's the only required one here. I don't think you learn much aside from passé composé in it, since it's assumed you know present tense (except no one does because no one takes French seriously until that grade since the curriculum doesn't take it seriously until then). Why does that happen then? There's absolutely no reason it can't happen while we're kids. It's better to learn languages when you're young anyway. After a certain age, it becomes really hard for us to learn pronunciations and even actual languages. Children are much, MUCH more receptive to languages when they are very young so French basics and vocab and pronunciation and all that should be taught as early as Kindergarten with grammar and more useful vocabulary in earlier grades to go with it.